


Marguerite Daisy

by EurtemocMaerd



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Beards (Relationships), F/F, F/M, Flowers, Forgiveness, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Internalized Homophobia, Language of Flowers, M/M, Marriage of Convenience, Mild Sexual Content, One Shot, Period-Typical Homophobia, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 17:07:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21511873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EurtemocMaerd/pseuds/EurtemocMaerd
Summary: “Ber, do you think it is a sin to love?”“Of course not, Mette. Why would you say that? Isn’t love the greatest thing a person could ever receive, or ever give? After all, it is only by love that you can understand your conscience, and God–”“But God lied. He lay down all these rules to be followed, but they have only caused wars and destruction. He told us to love and forgive, but He took the lead in judging and killed the innocent indiscriminately. He said to love one another, but people who pursue love end up getting hurt, imprisoned, stoned, burned… like Antonio and Lo–”“They deserved it. It’s abnormal. It’s wrong.”“What is? Love? Them? Aren’t we all the same? They’re just like you and me, no?”“Yes. But, no. Because it’s against nature–”“And what about your ‘wife’?”**************In which a mismatched couple married only to avoid social stigma, both in mourning and trapped in an unrequited love, learn to tolerate each other, forgive, and move on.
Relationships: Belgium/Denmark (Hetalia), Denmark/Netherlands (Hetalia), Denmark/Norway, Denmark/Sweden (Hetalia), Estonia/Finland (Hetalia), Female Denmark/Belgium (Hetalia), Female Denmark/Female Norway (Hetalia), Female Denmark/Netherlands (Hetalia), Female Denmark/Sweden (Hetalia), Female Estonia/Finland (Hetalia), Female Norway/Sweden (Hetalia), Finland/Sweden (Hetalia), Norway/Sweden (Hetalia), South Italy/Spain (Hetalia)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	Marguerite Daisy

It was almost like a sacred ritual for some strange, pious devotion. Whenever summer sheds its first light on the snow-white chimes of the lily of the valley, off she would go, my wife, sojourning in a trance-like state amidst the stretch of fresh green meadows. Occasionally she would halt in her ghostly steps, and gracefully bend down with the lithe agility of a passing dragonfly descending upon a still, glassy lake. There her fairy fingers would curl slowly onto the newly-sprouted stems, and with a crisp pluck add to the bouquet cradled in her left hand. Sometimes she would choose the angelica for their pure simplicity, at others the mountain avens for their soft fragrance, or the columbine for their vibrant shades. Yet, in her grasp one would never fail to observe the marguerite daisy, with their fragile white wings shielding, supporting its tiny golden crown.

With her bosom full of the day’s little harvest she would wander again towards the water, wherever water was. Curiously, however, the current would always be headed south, be it river, or stream, or brook. By the running water she would quietly sit, as though in mourning, carefully peeling off each petal and sending it into the blue, to be carried wherever the waves would like to bring them. Throughout the self-ordained mass I would keep her silent company, wandering by her fleeting apparition, watching the technicoloured train of her embalmed bridal veil flowing into the distance, in my own share of laments.

* * *

I was barely fifteen when my one love, with pensive taciturnity and eternally joyous beam, slipped into my life, and stole my virgin kiss.

For all I could recall I had always been alone. Acquaintances would perhaps see in me a forlorn stranger, but forlorn had never been a stranger to me. Close as I might have been as an infant to my mother, the sole fragment of her I had left was but a lingering white shadow, a vague remnant of whoever had born the porcelain white face on the faded portrait still hung in the hall. It was almost as if I had never known the warmth of her motherly bosom, nor had I seemed to remember her kind, gentle words. In a flicker she had passed by, and by the time I came to understand things she had long since passed away. With my half-sister Mette I had then found ourselves wards to her brother, a stern, meticulous man of few words, hands already full with his own many children. For the better of the time Mette and I had had ourselves distanced from other members of the household, for flaxen hair and white skin were exactly where our resemblance stopped. Under the same roof we found ourselves strangers, partitioned by an imperturbable invisible wall that accompanied my sister and I wherever we set foot on. His children never trusted us, nor did he ever, and the sentiments were happily reciprocated.

In time, Mette and I, too, grew apart, and our past comradery somehow manifested itself first into aggressive rivalry, then to mutual disdain, and eventually into the rigid, civil exchanges we would offer each other now, in paper and ink. Some nine years ago she had gone off and engaged herself to some Dutchman in the florist business, as they all do, and we had been an ocean apart ever since. The last time she wrote me she had just taken up the study of plant symbolism and whatnot, and, should my recollection not fail me, had an entire paragraph dedicated to the artistry and aesthetic of the marguerite daisy and its name. There was something about her husband’s pet rabbit adoring the white and golden clusters of gauzy petals, and here and there snippets of her latest biking trip with her sister-in-law in Flanders. Or was it Brabant? A curious note to add, perhaps. At least, when I locked the letter along with many others in the tiny desk compartment, I was sure I had paid no mind to such trivial musings.

“Geez, you really take on from your uncle, don’t you?” 

Every so often I would attempt to retort, but a slender forefinger would always find their way to my lips before I could do so, and there would be a smile, and a joking hush. Those full cheeks would always have a rosy hue in stark contrast to a paler complexion, pink orchids lain on the winter’s first snow. 

* * *

By the southward waters I stood tracing a wayward leaf that would not flow downstream alongside its fragile companions. The river ran below it, alike wild horses galloping into the sea’s wide open arms. Some supernatural force seemed to be keeping it stubbornly afloat, obstinately dwelling whence it should be past. My wife must have noticed it as well, for her coral lips puckered in sour distaste, her delicate fingers fidgeting with impatience, tarnished buds matted over her mauve and gold-trimmed skirt. All of a sudden she lunged forward, clawing into the troubled stream, now riddled with hideous ripples. I started at once. My gut knew. After all this time, still it was her that took the plunge. After all this time, still I was too afraid..

“Leave it be.”

She did not stop, unyielding as always. And ever so desperate.

“Sigrid, dear --”

“Don’t you ever dare call me that.”

She had whipped around, platinum bangs obscuring half of her eternal blank complexion. Chilled as her face might be, as were her pale, angular limbs, her violet feline eyes contained a terrific wildness, a violent, albeit silent, fury that manifested itself into the slightest furrow of the brow, or squinting of the eye. The mildest of annoyance to be observed, perhaps. Yet for her thoughts to be even scarcely realised already signified extreme dismay and annoyance.

“Sigrid, if the leaf wants to stay upstream, _let it be._ It is not your flowers. It will never go to Mette.”

“And it will never go to Timo either,” she quietly snapped. Gathering whatever was left of the crushed petals with her sable skirts, again she wandered away, grimly fading back into the stretch of green canvas. Patches of heather and orchid strewn on the meadow beneath the bright summer sun and its azure, cloudless host. Another picturesque vista I could only marvel at from the void.

* * *

“The one and only problem I have with you… In your eyes I’m always some fragile flower, and so to you I’m merely a detached object, some kind of possession. No matter where I go you breathe down my neck, because it seems to be the only way you can express your devotion to me but—” Timo softly sighed, his rose-tinted cheeks creased. Arms crossed, his earth-brown leather boots clattered as he trod the oaken floorboards in circular motion. Yet there he was, calm as the eye of a most inclement hurricane. His flush seemed to have dyed even the tip of his pallid, elf-like ears. I had never seen my love that way before, and could only wonder whatever lies that wretched Russian could have been feeding him, bewitching him like that.

“... But it’s not how I’ve ever wanted us to be. Look. I’m not your wife, Berwald. I’m not just another ornament. Do you think it’s a nice and easy ordeal working with Ivan Braginsky? No. Am I really that scared, innocent little flower in your imagination who has no flipping clue what he really wants from me? No! I know what kind of man he is, and I know how he coveted not just my presence but my— Do I like it? No! But do I take it over depending on you? Yes! You want to know why?”

“... No, Timo. I don’t.” I had not wanted an explanation for his choice, for it was my sole desire at the moment, so much as I could remember now, to know what it was that devil of a man had that I could not ever give him. It did not matter why. Just how. And what.

“Exactly,” Light purple eyes, like wild, wild heather, pierced into mine, his silvery voice still a chime as ever. “You don’t. Because it’s always you. You. _You_ did this. _You_ want this. _You_ are going to have this. But… what about _me_?”

But Timo was wrong. I would know. I knew from that moment, that that monster’s venom had sunk too deep into him, and blinded his soft, unsuspecting senses. I knew it was still me he truly loved, and truly needed. I knew from the well of my very soul, that it was only by my care and toil that a sweet, pure lily of the valley as he could possibly flourish in a life of blitheness, and that it was only my love that could give him what he truly needed. I would know him better than anyone else ever could, for he was mine, and it was only I that could ever know him better than he himself.

“No matter what kind of a person he may be, he gave me space whenever I told him to. It’s refreshing, you know. My hands… it’s as if I regained possession of them, instead of being someone else’s left arm or something. It’s the agency. For once in a long, long time I feel like I, too, am an actual person. Blood and flesh. Not petals and leaves blended into another of your romanticised mental paintings. Not your ‘wife’.”

Bright amethysts dulled, and blinked away the crystalline tears he had been trying too hard to stifle. Soft white hands reached onto the soft white face to reap the stream, swiping into the red rose that now bloomed oh so brilliantly on his soft white canvas. I could not move before the awe, the beauty, the splendour. I would not have known how.

“You know what? Give me my Hana, and take back your Peter. I’m done with being your ‘Mrs Oxenstierna’, Berwald. Let me be my own Timo Väinämöinen.”

* * *

Seven. Seven springs had since passed. Seven years that crept along, each one’s passing signified by a new colony of snow white May bells, in rhizomes budding on the rejuvenated sward. Seven summers without his bubbly charm igniting even the brightest white nights. Seven winters without tasting his fancy (though endearingly questionable) gourmet attempts, without any medium to wish him a happy birthday, as we had always done between ourselves. I would write to him, and to the pet we had once shared and doted on together, for it was the most I could do. Sometimes little Peter, when his own father Arthur went out seeking “artistic inspiration” from the French player downtown, would come along, and scribble in his childish words a few greetings and “missing you”s. It was a little sacred ritual we had kept all these years, even after Sigrid came, and Timo stopped responding, three years ago. One of my uncle’s sons claimed to have witnessed him tearfully embracing a bespectacled young woman with tousled dirty blond hair, a newly polished ring around his left finger.

It was in Talinn, my cousin said. The fiancée would have been from the university, working her way through those weighty student debts. He had known him from his drinking pal Feliks, whose Lithuanian boyfriend used to room with the girl (and a few other colleagues, of course). Some time in between the Russian and her he had apparently found himself in the army, and came back a decorated veteran and expert marksman. Some hundred kills, my cousin faintly heard amid the commotion with his own novice Estonian. She had taken him to dinner on that first night they were reunited, and gone down on one knee two courses in.

I felt my heart sink, even more so than the shock that had come over me that instant. Perhaps it wasn’t supposed to be anything worthy of surprise at all, I was just too blind to notice my perception’s own anomaly, both towards myself, and towards him. No pair of glasses could possibly ameliorate that. Not now, at least.

The ring wasn’t much, my cousin said. Nothing compared to the diamonds and gold and silver I used to shower him with, when he was mine. Simple as it appeared to be, it was a silver band, nonetheless, with some sky blue and snow white rocks encrusted into it. Timo had always loved those colours. He used to talk about how it reminded him of the soft snow and festivities in his native land, and the thousand lakes that he would marvel at and skate upon.

I never knew the address, nor had I bothered to inquire for myself. Nevertheless, every winter on his birthday I (and Peter) wrote something, and had it mailed and returned and buried by the lily of the valley patch without fail. 

Moving on, then, was perhaps another thing I had never had allowed myself to come to know.

* * *

For the five years we have been together never once have I slept in the same room as Sigrid. Nor have we ever gone to bed at a same time. At five afternoon she would come back from her shift in the coffee shop and lock herself into the bedroom facing west. Reading or writing. Mette said it was her lifelong dream to live at sea, and so she’s studying to be a marine or something. She would’ve done so long ago, my sister said, were it not for her family’s tragedy, or perhaps it’s because of it that she’s doing so. Apparently, when she was fifteen her brother and parents got lost at sea, and nobody had heard of them since. They said the kid was barely seven then.

“I won’t burden you for long,” she had declared upon her arrival, head to toe adorned in Mette’s belongings, a messenger and refugee. “Once my debts are paid I’ll be leaving for good. Mette has told me everything. Don’t waste your time trying those ways on me. Better if you forget my presence entirely. I don’t plan on staying.”

Her lips twitched, her face unmoving. It would take a blind man to swear that Timo could rival her natural beauty, or even aspire to it. Aloofness was her only fault, which in turn added to her grace and mystery, like a pristine work of marble, a haughty vixen in the winter snow. 

“Take this,” before I could speak she had a paper envelope shoved into my hand, immediately proceeded to make herself home by the hearth, and never spoke again for a week. Hesitantly I opened the letter, only letting out the breath I had no idea was held when I recognised the distinctly orderly cursive of my brother-in-law.

The letter had, nevertheless, offered some explanation, but it had quite failed to prepare me for what was to come. All I knew then of this girl was that her name was Sigrid Thomasson, eighteen, solitary, broke, a confidante of my sister, and got in trouble because of her. Her silver locks were kept in a messy braid, held together with a thin navy string. Apart from her luggage nothing seemed to be her own, or at least in a measure of her own. From her oversized outfit alone I had identified Mette’s blouse, Mette’s cardigan, Mette’s skirt, Mette’s trench coat (the newer, beige one), Mette’s ridiculous daisy-patterned lace stockings, Mette’s hiking boots only used once every two years, Mette’s out-of-place and over-patriotic scarf, and the silver cross around her neck.

We each made our own supper, except on Sundays, when we took turns. At mealtimes we never tried to hide our mutual disgust at the cuisine lain on the opposite end of the table. She would blame me for ruining her appetite with my side’s pungent odour, and I would return the sentiment with accusations of either blandness or saltiness. From the first second we had gotten off wrong feet, and from the start we knew we were mismatches, but still we trudged on towards this dead end together, for there was one thing we shared.

Two forlorn loiterers, darkly clad. Both distrusting. Both in mourning. Both at a loss. Moving on, to us, seemed to be some kind of monster we had never dared to know. And hence we sojourn in this barren spring meadow, alone but in each other’s company, searching for something, someone, that had already ceased to be part of our lives. In her fathomless indigo eyes I saw myself, and my longing. A futile desire for connection with an estranged family, a closest sibling far away, a lover found.

I remember having begun to wonder, to deduct that where I had lost a sister, she might have lost a love.

My suspicions were at last confirmed when she came home inebriated one night, perhaps a year or so ago. She had leaned into my shoulder and whispered strings of the sweetest nothings I had never been the recipient of. Teases and strange hymns I could only dare to dream for Timo to mouth in the heated nights we shared on the same sofa, but long, long gone. Soon the night escalated, and we had, very unwillingly, found ourselves entangled in each other’s arms the next morning, only protected from further embarrassment by a single stained sheet. We had decided to pretend that had never happened, and to suppress every remaining memory of this, our only shared adventure into the dark. Nonetheless, every so often it would return to haunt me, when every light in the house had been reduced to nothingness, in the form of her anguished murmurs for Mette. Mette. Only Mette, as she adorned me, neck to thigh, with feral, passionate kisses that left the snowy canvas with chains and chains of marguerite daisies.

I had since forgotten what I had scattered in her frail, pallid gardens in return. Perhaps seeds of the lowly twinflowers, or that of the unsuspecting May bells, bitter tears of the Holy Virgin. It didn’t matter, of course. I was not supposed to remember, anyhow.

* * *

“Ber, do you think it is a sin to love?”

“Of course not. Why would you say that? Isn’t love the greatest thing a person could ever receive, or ever give? After all, it is only by love that you can understand your conscience, and God–”

“But God lied. He lay down all these rules to be followed so that there can be heaven on Earth, but they have only caused wars and destruction. He told us to love and forgive, but He took the lead in judging what is strange to Him, and He killed the innocent indiscriminately. He tells us to love one another, but people who pursue love end up getting hurt. They get scolded, imprisoned, stoned, burned… Antonio and Lo–”

“They deserved it. It’s abnormal. It’s wrong.”

“What is? Love? Them? Aren’t we all the same? They’re just like you and me, no?”

“Yes. But, no. Because it’s against nature. It has to be–”

“And what about Timo Väinämöinen? Your ‘wife’?”

“... Mette, you know it’s just something… something affectionate. Something private between us, nothing more.”

It had almost been eleven years since Mette had brought up the conversation, around the time we were sixteen, seventeen. I had known Timo for nearly two years then, and we were almost inseparable. As for my sister, she had always been troublesome, doubting and challenging everything that constructed the lifestyle we had always led and known, peaceful and harmonious, however lonesome it had often been. In the week leading to her posing this question she had newly received her confirmation, the same day two of our childhood friends were ousted and excommunicated by the vicinity. They were accused of love, and it brewed such hatred that the following day found them vanished without a trace, and the night after downstream, unbreathing, their rigid fingers still tightly interlaced with the other’s. They hadn’t jumped. Someone shot them.

“Say, Berwald, hypothetically. Just hypothetically,” Mette gulped, eyes bloodshot from unrest. We were seated at the pew furthest from the altar, and her coarse, clumsy hands wouldn’t stop fidgeting with the silver cross strung around her neck. “Say you found me like they found them. Say I… Say I’m not dating Abel Maes, but E– Emma Maes. Like, Abel’s, maybe, just a ruse, or something like that. Say you saw us… messing around… like they saw Toni and Lovi… Say that happened. Will you still say that? Will you let me die at their hands and smile as it goes? Am I a freak of nature, too?”

* * *

  
“And you never replied. Coward,” Sigrid drawled monotonously, carelessly tossing the outdated newspaper into the fireplace. I started, in another futile attempt of salvation, only to watch helplessly as the it burst into flame, scintillating. My last physical memorabilia of Mette Andersen.

Mette Andersen, my half-sister, my rival, my confidante. Once upon a time she lied with me on the stretch of grass green meadows abundant with the sweetest smelling marguerite daisies, inherited from the mother we wished we could have known. Now she lies in the water, six feet under, with her husband’s sister. Their fingers were interlaced, their faces pristine and serene. They hadn’t drowned.

God knows they hadn’t drowned.

I wish they had instead.

“I thought you loved her,” I asked hesitantly. I didn't understand why she had to burn the papers. No, I guess I knew, I just didn’t want to.

“This is the last side of her she would have wanted you to remember. The last thing Mette ever wanted to be, Mr Oxenstierna, was a martyr. A promise we have made, to reunite in hell. That is where she wanted to head. We’d fall from grace, we’d lead the devils, but never, ever have we wished for praise, for glory. If our only sin was love, leave us sinners be.”

And she went up to the shelves lined with baskets and vases of her assorted bouquets, picked a handful of them, and took the seat beside me, just before the conflagrant hearth. I was half hoping for her to toss those into the fire as well, like how people in the Orient burnt paper effigies to ashes so that they could be spiritually transferred into the afterlife. Yet, I was wrong. Instead, Sigrid lay each mini bouquet on the carpeted floor, forming a horizontal, floral barrier between ourselves and the flames that were eagerly consuming its tragic fuel. I watched on in silence, the same manner I had been watching the technicoloured train of her embalmed blossoms flowing into the distant water for half a decade now.

How we had made it as “husband” and “wife” was a wonder to me, and every so often I would be encased in the strange thought that if our amateurish act were able to convince the world for so long, perhaps normal marriages of women and men, on their own, meant absolutely nothing at all. I suppose Mette would have shared my thoughts, should she be here, lying upside down on the sofa, exactly the way she had always loved. Abel and her, Sigrid and I… All these loveless vows and rituals, so potent in convincing the world of our normalcy and intimacy, in spite of them being utter lies. Surely we couldn’t be alone in this. How many, I wondered then, of the countless registered relationships in the universe were not as they seemed. How many of us had fooled the ones in charge and by extent the entire universe or even ourselves? I could only imagine.

The flowers formed a line before our very eyes, and for a moment, Sigrid and I, our minds seemed to have linked together in one as well. All of a sudden Mette’s letters flashed before my eyes, and something struck that made me connect the floral arrangement to her own flowery words and messy handwriting.

Marguerite daisies. Purple violets. Poppies and heather. Another batch of violets, and another daisy. An orange tulip with stinging nettle. Heather with balm. Twinflowers. A single carnation, its stem still fresh and green. Beside it, a lily of the valley. Another twinflower. A strange assortment of dandelion, eglantine, may bells, snowdrops, mountain avens and even more marguerite daisies. Heather. Sweet pea, and still, a marguerite daisy.

What Mette had suggested all those years ago was no hypothesis, of course. The one she truly adored had always been Emma, with her good humour, quick wit and kind disposition. Mette took care of Sigrid after tragedy struck her, and in the process she, too, became enamoured with my half-sister. And Abel stood watchfully through it all, doing whatever it took to protect the women from ridicule of the public eye, for God had indeed lied, and our fellow man were unready. Because of what she had experienced and seen with Mette, Sigrid thought she understood my feelings for Timo. My wife and I might have been mismatches from the start, but we were tied together by a same circumstance and a same love. With Mette’s passing we became quasi-equal in loss. The loss of family, and loss of love. For this, we together grieved, and found wounds in our sunken hearts. Yet, it’s also what brought us closer, more understanding and respecting of the other’s plight and solitude, and with that perhaps we could overcome our fears and regrets, little by little. Should we be grateful? Perhaps we should, after all. For whoever, whatever it was that had strung out fates together. Alone, but together.

Indecipherable violet eyes bore into mine, a gaze so piercing it tapped into my soul, like a snow fox peering into a vast, frozen lake from the depths of her twilit woods. For a long while we stayed that way, watching over each other, huddled before the fire.

Faery fingers smithed, weaving tiny buds into a garland. A crown of marguerite daisies. Marguerite daisies, the flowers of innocence and purity, of loyalty and faith. The flowers of disguise. And Mette’s favourite.

She placed it on my head.

**Author's Note:**

> Marguerite Daisy - National Flower of Denmark  
> Heather - National Flower of Norway  
> Twinflower/Linnea Borealis - National Flower of Sweden  
> Lily of the Valley/May Bells - National Flower of Finland  
> Mountian Avens/Dryas Octopetala - National Flower of Iceland  
> Poppy - National Flower of Belgium  
> Tulip - National Flower of the Netherlands  
> Purple Violets - Symbol of lesbianism  
> Green Carnations - Symbol of homosexuality  
> Stinging Nettle - Protection  
> Balm - Sympathy  
> Dandelion - Overcoming of hardships  
> Eglantine - Healing wounds  
> Snowdrop - Consolation and hope  
> Sweet Pea - Gratitude  
> Daisies in general - Innocence and loyalty, or the concealing of one's true feelings or beliefs


End file.
